The wife bought me a new Ipad 2 for Xmas. I have never owned anything other than a laptop or desktop. It is sitting still sealed in the box as I lost my beloved dog on Xmas eve. I have been in rough shape the last few weeks and am starting to get my life back to normal. With that being said I ordered a protective case and screen today.
I also would like some recommendations.

I need a pair of head phones as I intend to watch Netflix-Amazon-and mkv's. Looking for decent but inexpensive.
What do I need to play mkv's off of my server?
Any nice apps or games that are a must have?
I intend to use it on the couch and in bed while the wife is watching those reality type shows. Uggggh. Thanks to any that may help in any way.

I would suggest just getting a pair of headphones that are comfortable for you. You could probably even get by with a cheap pair of earphones if those don't bother you.

Air Video is probably the best app for the job in terms of streaming video to your device. Some people like EC Player as well. There are probably others out there, but those are the ones that I've heard about.

Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Plants vs. Zombies are probably some of the most popular games. They're all fairly cheap as well, so if you get more than a few hours of enjoyment out of them, they're easily worth it. A few companies have ported a few DS games to iOS as well. You can get Final Fantasy 3 if you're into RPGs. Capcom also ported the first Ace Attorney game as well, but I don't think they have an iPad version so you'd need to stick with the iPhone version. They also ported Ghost Trick which is a pretty fun puzzle game. Additionally, Baldur's Gate was recently released for iOS. It's got a few bugs still and they have yet to release an update to fix them, but overall it's a pretty solid experience.

As far as other apps are concerned, I'd suggest getting the Kindle app for reading books. Beyond that, it really depends what services, etc. you use as there are plenty of Twitter apps and other social network apps. For the most part, I think just having a web browser makes the tablet worth it so I don't tend to use too many other apps.

I went through a bunch of video streaming apps and the one I like by far is VLC Streamer. Costs $2 and really worth it. And if you watch Anime fansubs, it does a great job with subtitles, something just about everything else failed with in one way or another.

Assuming this content is TV shows and Movies, I think Plex is a far better solution than AirVideo, mostly because it provides metadata and has apps on ALL platforms, not just iOS. It's also being more actively developed.

Assuming this content is TV shows and Movies, I think Plex is a far better solution than AirVideo, mostly because it provides metadata and has apps on ALL platforms, not just iOS. It's also being more actively developed.

I was going to reply when I first saw this, but I thought to myself, "self, it's been about a year since you used Plex. Maybe it's better!"

So I went off to the server through RDP and right-clicked on my Plex icon and hit update. I was only a couple versions behind, despite never using it I usually update it when it asks. So it updated and I checked that my libraries were still added and I did an update. I waited about 10 minutes, the web interface said it was updating files. Then I redownloaded the Plex app And fired her up and was instantly disappointed.

I don think I have that complicated a file structure. It's just xshow name\season x\sxxexx - show title.mkv. It shouldn't be that hard. But what it did was take every show I have that has a season 1 folder and randomly pick episodes to fill out a season schedule. There's some homeland in there, some game of thrones, some 30 rock, just randomly selected as an episode number. It gets easier when I click on season 9 and season 38 because there's just one show I have that has that many seasons.

So yeah, I'm not using Plex for the same reason I don't use xbmc. If I have to think about my library set up for more than two minutes I'm moving on. Give me airvideo's straight directory listing any day over broken library organization.

__________________
This post paid for by the committee to re-invade Vietnam.

I was going to reply when I first saw this, but I thought to myself, "self, it's been about a year since you used Plex. Maybe it's better!"

So I went off to the server through RDP and right-clicked on my Plex icon and hit update. I was only a couple versions behind, despite never using it I usually update it when it asks. So it updated and I checked that my libraries were still added and I did an update. I waited about 10 minutes, the web interface said it was updating files. Then I redownloaded the Plex app And fired her up and was instantly disappointed.

I don think I have that complicated a file structure. It's just xshow name\season x\sxxexx - show title.mkv. It shouldn't be that hard. But what it did was take every show I have that has a season 1 folder and randomly pick episodes to fill out a season schedule. There's some homeland in there, some game of thrones, some 30 rock, just randomly selected as an episode number. It gets easier when I click on season 9 and season 38 because there's just one show I have that has that many seasons.

So yeah, I'm not using Plex for the same reason I don't use xbmc. If I have to think about my library set up for more than two minutes I'm moving on. Give me airvideo's straight directory listing any day over broken library organization.

There is list By Folder on Plex IIRC. I switched over from StreamToMe/AirVideo/Qloud because running multiple stream servers for both platforms is annoying. And I just recently got WP phone as well, so having Plex saves alot of headaches.

You can list by folder, but all it shows you is a folder list of what it's identified. I can't really "browse" the file system. That's what I tried to do when I first set it up ages ago and it had the same effect.

I remember dropping wrestlemania in to a temp folder and since Plex couldn't identify what it was, I couldn't play it. Pop open air video, can select the folder/file just fine.

But I do understand air video is an iOS specific solution that's not going to work for everyone. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to write an android client, don't know why there isn't one.

__________________
This post paid for by the committee to re-invade Vietnam.

I was going to reply when I first saw this, but I thought to myself, "self, it's been about a year since you used Plex. Maybe it's better!"

So I went off to the server through RDP and right-clicked on my Plex icon and hit update. I was only a couple versions behind, despite never using it I usually update it when it asks. So it updated and I checked that my libraries were still added and I did an update. I waited about 10 minutes, the web interface said it was updating files. Then I redownloaded the Plex app And fired her up and was instantly disappointed.

I don think I have that complicated a file structure. It's just xshow name\season x\sxxexx - show title.mkv. It shouldn't be that hard. But what it did was take every show I have that has a season 1 folder and randomly pick episodes to fill out a season schedule. There's some homeland in there, some game of thrones, some 30 rock, just randomly selected as an episode number. It gets easier when I click on season 9 and season 38 because there's just one show I have that has that many seasons.

So yeah, I'm not using Plex for the same reason I don't use xbmc. If I have to think about my library set up for more than two minutes I'm moving on. Give me airvideo's straight directory listing any day over broken library organization.

If you're doing actual folder/file organization, you're doing it wrong. That's why SickBeard exists. I never rename stuff on my own, I *acquire* a show, stick it in a folder SickBeard watches, then it automatically renames it, sticks it in the proper sorted folder, notifies Plex that a new episode exists so it can download metadata and boom, Internet PVR.

Heck, with SickBeard and SABnzbd, I don't even have to look for the show, it's downloaded automatically for me. Best thing in the world.

The wife bought me a new Ipad 2 for Xmas. I have never owned anything other than a laptop or desktop. It is sitting still sealed in the box as I lost my beloved dog on Xmas eve. I have been in rough shape the last few weeks and am starting to get my life back to normal. With that being said I ordered a protective case and screen today.
I also would like some recommendations.

I need a pair of head phones as I intend to watch Netflix-Amazon-and mkv's. Looking for decent but inexpensive.
What do I need to play mkv's off of my server?
Any nice apps or games that are a must have?
I intend to use it on the couch and in bed while the wife is watching those reality type shows. Uggggh. Thanks to any that may help in any way.

Also, the hilariously-soon-to-be-superseded 4 is about the worst value ever ATM. Refurb 3 would make more sense.

I disagree. An iPad 2 and iPad 3 are very similar, hardware-wise. Basically, just the higher-res screen, 1GB of RAM and rear camera are just about the only improvements. The iPad 4 delivers a faster processor, a faster GPU and a more power efficient cellular connection in addition to that. The 3rd gen iPad was a stop gap, the 4th gen is an upgrade.

__________________
This post paid for by the committee to re-invade Vietnam.

I look at it from a different POV. The iPad 3 had the same GPU as the 2, but with double the units for double the resolution. On paper, the iPad 3 should be twice as fast as the 2, but if you ran stuff at the native resolution, it chugged along at the same speed.

The iPad 4, on the other hand, not only goes all out with a MP4, but upgrades to the 554, which is about twice as powerful as the 543.

__________________
This post paid for by the committee to re-invade Vietnam.

I look at it from a different POV. The iPad 3 had the same GPU as the 2, but with double the units for double the resolution. On paper, the iPad 3 should be twice as fast as the 2, but if you ran stuff at the native resolution, it chugged along at the same speed.

The iPad 4, on the other hand, not only goes all out with a MP4, but upgrades to the 554, which is about twice as powerful as the 543.

I'm thinking about it this way: the refurb 3 is actually cheaper than a new 2, and has a feature that you'll notice every single second you use the device (the screen!).

The 4 is 25% more expensive for internal upgrades the OP, as a light basic user, is unlikely to get much from.

If it's mostly going to be for casual web browsing and streaming vidoes, he probably doesn't need a 4th gen iPad.

It's not the performance that matters. It's the number of years it will be supported by developers. At some point, the iPad 2 will no longer get the latest version of iOS, and at some point after that, will not be able to download apps from the app store (It's already starting to happen with the original iPad and it's not even 3 years old).